


The Corrupted Age

by anglosaxonchronicle



Category: Middle Earth Legendarium, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 02:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19053172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anglosaxonchronicle/pseuds/anglosaxonchronicle
Summary: This is an account of the events 300 years after the Lord of the Rings finishes, a time which was later known as the Corrupted Age. It is a time of a resurgence in dark magic, but not any seen before in Middle Earth. It is a time of new evil.This work is fully my own invention, but the universe it takes place in and some characters and events mentioned are made by JRR Tolkien.I do not own any of the Middle Earth Universe.





	1. Prologue

_But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire._

_'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried. 'My Precious! O my Precious!' And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail Precious and he was gone. There was a roar and a great confusion of noise. Fires leapt up and licked the roof._ **T** **he Return of the King – J. R. R. Tolkien**

Gollum held the ring as he was consumed by flames, shrieking and wailing until it overwhelmed him. In the last seconds before he was covered by the fire, he forced his spindly little finger through the ring beside Frodo's severed digit and vanished. The pain was blinding and he shouted in agony, but his mouth was soon filled with liquid heat as he felt himself being coated in molten rock. The ring and whatever was left of the creature Gollum sank to the bottom of the fire pit of Mount Doom, where he remained for decades and decades. 

One day, around sixty years later, Mount Doom finally ceased its roaring. The fire had gone out in its heart, and the seemingly endless flow of lava did the unexpected - it ended. Nobody knew where the lava went, whether it had turned to stone or somehow flowed out of the mountain was an utter mystery. Left in the once mighty volcano was a cave system to rival the Great Caves of Old Paratur in the Yellow Hills, with a network of tunnels and crevices which looked almost mannish in their construction. In one of these tunnels, the creature once known as Gollum sat, as he had since Frodo had cast the ring into the flames all those years before. He could now move around in the newfound emptiness, dazed and almost blinded by sixty years consumed by fire. All that had protected him was the power of the One Ring, a power so strong and so dark that it was never destroyed, even in the lava in which it was forged.

Sauron was not stupid, nor was he lacking in knowledge of his enemies, so he realised the potential for permanent destruction of his ring in Mount Doom. He never intended to destroy it, and didn't want anyone else to either, so he used his dark powers to make it wholly resistant to even the fires which casted it. So, the ring remained whole, retaining diminished, but still powerful, abilities. The most powerful of the twenty rings stayed intact, maintaining Gollum's form and soul for many years after the disbanding of the Fellowship. 

Three hundred years passed, and he had moved around a lot since then, now residing in a cave near Knurlwood. The creature awoke from its sleep, disrupted by the light of the sun. It moved to the opening of its cave and grumbled. A hare jumped past, and with the speed of an Elven bow, it was snatched out of the air and its neck was broken. The creature bit into its breakfast, then hobbled down to the stream to drink.

The water stirred memories of a better time before it became this disturbed being, in the Shire with Mother and Father. It now had no name that it or anyone else remembered, but in its thoughts, it called itself “Shous”, so will henceforth be referred to as such. It had worn the One Ring for over 300 years and had been decayed and degraded by its power for so long that it was no longer recognisable as even a shadow of the former creature. If it still held a soul, it was so intertwined with the power of the ring that it was not the soul of Smeagol or Gollum. It was the soul of evil.

Shous was not a creature with many thoughts, rather it acted on any and all impulses it felt, whether if it was its own or the ring's. On this particular day, its main impulse was to venture into Knurlwood, and it did. It scuttled (for scuttled is the only suitable word) up to the edge of the wood, and knocked on a tree trunk. Entering the wood, it saw many trees standing dead, or dying, of funguses and disease. It advanced through the trees and saw more of the same sickness, the likes of which hadn't been seen for about 200 years in the Sickness of Tunan, the nearest Man town. It reached a great gnarled tree with symbols carved in its bark and stopped. Marvelling at its size, even such a desolate creature as Shous could understand it was not an ordinary tree. It caressed the branches with almost motherly tenderness and brushed its hands along the wood.

Its elbow glanced a crudely carved symbol, and it felt a sharp pain in the hand wearing the ring. It stared at the ring with hatred for the very first time, then the strange feeling was gone. It blinked and began walking around the tree. Despite its small, nimble frame, the incident with the ring had shaken it, and it soon tripped on a large protruding tree root, hitting its head on the tree. It smacked into a large symbol carved into the trunk and immediately fell into deep unconsciousness.

Two hours later, Shous awoke. It looked down, and, still dazed, blinked a few times. It could see itself. It looked at its hand. No ring. It screamed and wailed like it hadn't for 300 years, and bashed its head against the tree trunk harder and harder until it almost knocked him out again. A wave of weakness overwhelmed it, and it landed hard on its hands. Without the sustaining power of the ring, it couldn't stand, and could barely crawl. Scrabbling about in the dirt, it desperately tried to find the ring, but its time was running out and, deep down, it knew it. Whatever gave the ring its power had been absorbed entirely by the wood, and, with the intertwined power and soul of the ring gone from its body, Shous was dying, as he should have done 300 years prior. It made one last attempt to find the ring and found a pool of molten gold in the dirt next to the tree. Just as it was dying without the ring's power, the ring was dying too.

It tried to salvage the gold and lunged at the liquid, but upon contact with the pool shrieked with pain – its hand disintegrated into ashes. The miserable creature was experiencing the fate it was intended all those centuries ago and felt itself being ripped apart as if smothered in fire once again. Within just one minute, all that was left of it was ash.

The tree's symbols glowed a faint orange, and the branches grew. Powerful magic was at work, and it was now in control of the One Ring, and the souls contained within. Knurlwood was becoming tainted with dark magic once again. _  
_


	2. ONE

_Rilleton-under-Waddlow_

Endo Carrabrook walked out of his family's hobbit-hole. He greeted his neighbour, Mr Paud. as he washed apples in the river. Rilleton hobbits, although normal on all fronts, do have a strange fondness for apples. Endo was, of course, no exception to this and bent down to pick up an apple which had bobbed down the stream. Crunching into it as he walked along, he was not paying any particular attention to anything when he walked directly into a figure cloaked in a rich yellow fabric. He was holding a wooden staff, which he dropped upon impact.

Looking up in surprise, Endo blinked at the figure before him.

“O! I am sorry,” Endo said. “Please forgive me.” The man looked down at the young hobbit, just shy of twenty, and coughed hard. His eyes widened in shock, and Endo desperately searched for his waterskin in the many pockets of his jacket. After around a minute of coughing from above him, he found it and offered it to the man, who grabbed it, not angrily, and took a large swig from the bottle. As the last remnants of his cough worked their way out of his throat, he dabbed at his eyes with his cloak sleeves.

“Goodness me,” he said, his eyes still a little watery. “This isn't what I expected to be welcomed with.”

'Welcomed?' Endo thought. 'What on earth does he mean?' As he thought this, Mr Paud expressed his thoughts out loud.

“What do you mean, welcomed?” Mr Paud said. “Nobody in this town has invited any Manfolk in for weeks.” Mr Paud was in charge of the local Committee, so knew these things, and prided himself on it.

The yellow-cloaked man cleared his throat, bent down and picked up his staff.

“I never claimed to be invited,” he said. “I also never claimed to be Man.” The man handed back Endo's now half-full waterskin. He looked Endo up and down and stared at the brook, deep in thought.

Moments passed until Mr Paud, an unusually quick-tempered hobbit, lost his patience.

“Well,” Mr Paud said, almost angrily now. “What are you doing here?”

“I am looking for a certain hobbit. Garno Carrabrook. Where might I find him?” The man looked at Mr Paud expectantly now, satisfied with his answer. The older hobbit was red-faced now, and seemed ready to eject the man from Rilleton, a power he rarely got to use as a member of the Committee. He began to talk, his voice raised, but Endo interrupted to avoid a scene being made, as most hobbits are not fond of arguments, and especially not with strangers.

“I am not Garno, but I am his son, Endo. I can take you to him,” Endo said, hoping to defuse the situation. “But I would ask your name before I invite you into my house.”

“My name, Master Carrabrook, is Cenrin. Some call me Cenrin the Yellow, although just Cenrin is fine.” Mr Paud's eyes bulged at this and he immediately apologised for his anger. Although Endo was not a traveler, and had never been further than Mount Waddlow, he did know what this meant.

"The yellow,” he repeated. “As in the yellow wizard. Of the New Wizards.”

“The very same, although new is not such an accurate description any more.” Cenrin bashed his staff on the ground, and a few sparks shot out of the end, as if to prove himself to the two hobbits. Endo, having never seen a wizard before, was in awe and led him back to his hobbit-hole without saying another word.

In Endo's home lived him, his parents and a small pony called Beo for riding to the market at Murton. The Carrabrooks's hobbit-hole was not small, nor was it poorly furnished. It had a garden in the back, where plenty of apples and carrots grew, and had so many bedrooms that it was easy to forget which room you slept in the night before. His father, Garno Carrabrook, came from a big family of prosperous tailors from Erbaton, and his mother's family, the Jales, were a family of landlords, who owned land in and around Rilleton, Knurlwood and even homes of men in Tunan. As they approached the top of the stream where the entrance was, the bees flew out of their beehives next to the door and gathered around Cenrin's staff. He chuckled, and his staff pulsed with magic to make the bees return to their homes. 

Endo opened the great red door (which was a trademark of a Carrabrook hole) and stepped into the front hall, wiping his feet on the mat as he did so. Cenrin, being rather taller than a hobbit, removed his hat and bent down to enter the house. He hung it on a hat stand and leaned his staff against the wall. 

"Just this way," said Endo, still a little overwhelmed by the wizard's presence. He led him down the hallway to the kitchen, where Garno was standing on a stool to reach some sugar. 

"Ahem," Cenrin coughed after a few seconds passed without the hobbit noticing them. Garno looked away from the sugar, and saw his son, and more notably, a yellow-cloaked wizard. Startled, he dropped a bag of sugar and tried to get off the stool, only to hit his balding head on the cupboard door and fall. He got up moments later, just slightly bemused.

 


End file.
